Very pretty Miss L, dog sitter, with her charges at the dog park last summer.
No permission to use photo hence the face blur.
So says Mr. Gurdjieff, although it’s hard to believe when we see a cheeky lineup like this pic. Of course the man is speaking allegorically, metaphorically, symbolically—you choose, so it becomes bearable when he says we must eliminate them. Kill is his word, which I obviously feel the need to euphemize. The issue becomes, what do dogs represent inside people, that daily Work must hound them (yes I did say it)?
The old time religion word for dogs could be sin, but that’s a totally different culture and mindset. GIG presents a detailed, more complex image of all our egoistic and hereditary shortcomings that place humanity as a whole into a deranged, suffering condition on this beautiful Earth. So the advice is to work daily to see and capture our dogs, to render them into a “pellucid” oil that can ease the running of our way. At least that’s my takeaway from last night’s web. And several years trying to reconcile literal with symbolic dogs.
It’s personal. GIG also gives us the term “magnetic center.” What’s that? My friend P was taking tea in the back room next to the stove with me a few days ago. Can’t recall how, but the subject came up as a statement that she never felt responsive in church, so never attended or pursued “spiritual” interests, not even as a child. Lord, I am grateful I got a call from you and I heard it. I suspect most people do not.
Lord, if I pray help us reach back when you reach out to us, I seem to be asking you to do all the work. Hardly fair. Very human, perhaps my devildog trying to shape the holy into the human. Lord, forgive.
Even so, Lord bless my pack today.
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